Henry L. Stimson

Henry L. Stimson (21 September 1867-20 October 1950) was the United States Secretary of War from 22 May 1911 to 4 March 1913 (succeeding Jacob M. Dickinson and preceding Lindley M. Garrison) and from 10 July 1940 to 21 September 1945 (succeeding Harry Hines Woodring and preceding Robert P. Patterson, also serving as Secretary of State from 28 March 1929 to 4 March 1933 (succeeding Frank B. Kellogg and preceding Cordell Hull).

Biography
Henry L. Stimson was born on 21 September 1867 in New York City, and he was sent to boarding school after his mother died in 1876. He was educated at Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and he became the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1906 under President Theodore Roosevelt, and he joined the US Republican Party. In 1910, he ran for Governor of New York, but he was defeated.

In 1911, President William Howard Taft appointed Stimson as Secretary of War, and he improved the US Army's efficiency prior to World War I. In 1913, he left office when Woodrow Wilson became president, and he served as an artillery officer in France during the war, rising to the rank of colonel in 1918. In 1927, he negotiated an end to the civil war in Nicaragua, and from 1927 to 1929 he served as Governor of the Philippines. That year, President Herbert Hoover had him appointed as Secretary of State, and he was a strong enemy of Japanese expansion.

In July 1940, he was granted new powers as Secretary of War for a second time, giving him influence over the issue of the United States joining World War II as a new member of the Allied Powers. He conscripted 13,000,000 soldiers and airmen and put 30% of the nation's industrial output to use on the battlefield, and his old age was no cause for a lack of energy. Stimson agreed with the policy of Japanese internment following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, a conservative policy that aligned with his party loyalties, and he argued for General George S. Patton to remain in the army after he slapped a cowardly soldier in Sicily in 1943. In 1945, he agreed with the nuclear bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, and he retired on 21 September 1945 after the war's end. He died of a heart attack on 20 October 1950.